About Us

The Liminal Art Salon® is the cultural, community-oriented arm of Star Mountain School of Liminal Art, a California 501(c)(3) non-profit educational corporation. Through art, poetry, music, and, dance we aspire to guide a new generation of artists seeking to renew the spirit and power of the creative arts, repossess it from the realm of technology, concept, and craft.

In Werner Hertzog’s movie, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” on cave art of 50,000 years ago, we see the power of the cave artists’ expression, the spiritual, vital and practical role art played in daily life. Entering a liminal state, we commit to evoking the interdependent, interconnectedness of all to insure the survival of the human tribe.

The Liminal Art Salon® is hosted by Jais Booth and Cheja. We invite artists, writers, and creative people whose consistent work shows deep understanding and commitment to creating liminal art, or desire to deepen their work through crossing the liminal threshold. The Salon is a forum to generate and brainstorm ideas, imaginings, creations, and curated shows and events to enhance each artist’s practice. We aim to bring the hero’s journey back into life and art. It is the archetypal journey of self discovery and returning to the community to share your gifts.

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What is liminal art?

The liminal is a threshold, i.e. a threshold of consciousness. The threshold being crossed is between ordinary, mundane consciousness and the higher vibrational dimensions of being.

Liminal art and poetry is inner-driven expression seeded with spirit, that by its nature manifests with a transcendent quality. This spirit expresses itself in every form of art, its transcendent essence being the sole determinate of a liminal work.

“A liminal artist/creator crosses the threshold of ordinary mental reality, entering the realms where myth, spirit, wisdom and enchantment arise, to create a work from those deeper, more primal, more encompassing realities. “The purpose of liminal art is not only to serve the artist, but to become a messenger of the transformative power of art for others, stimulate and deepen their own imagination, and evoke the liminal state in the observer.”
– Jais Booth

As liminal is a realm of being, there is no liminal in art; there is a liminal state from which a creative work emerges, refers to, and is realized. Realization: what is experienced in the liminal state is made available to the mind and senses.

Liminal is not a style. Liminal refers to a certain depth and realization of the mystical/mythical realms, which can be rendered in any style.

Liminal art is not mundane or derivative, not conceptual, not prose stories posing as poems, not just emotional outbursts, nor art that is intellectual, thought out or slapped out. These all have their place. Rather, it seeks to integrate the head and heart to create art that is from one’s depths, one’s truth.

We believe we are here as artists to help birth the next age, an age in which the human soul is more valuable than a corporation, an age where a general enlightening of human consciousness will come to fruition. An age with a vaster view of our lives; with vaster hearts.

We are Alchemists

We create a space, a container, an atmosphere, and a receptivity that allows you to see into yourself more deeply and clearly. From such insight, understanding comes, and from that understanding a wiser basis for making choices. It is your own truth that you see more clearly. And it is from an understanding of inner truth that you can act consciously with integrity, and create authentically. Our work catalyzes and assists this awakening.

Bronton Cheja, PhD ~ Cheja’s Background

Bronton Cheja, PhD
Depth Psychotherapist and Poet

Ph.D. Depth Psychology
M.A. Art Therapy
Certified Alchemical Hypnotherapist
Certified Life Coach
Co-founder of Liminal Art Salon®

I work with individuals who want to explore their inner lives to transmute past or current trauma, habits, and limitations so as to live more freely, and truer to their basic nature.

And I work with individuals who have a serious desire to express themselves creatively in deeper, more expansive, authentic ways.

I do this with individuals through Alchemical Journeying, and with individuals and groups through creative workshops Evoking the Muse.

I have engaged in the art of poetry for 50 years as a means of creative joy as well as for exploring my inner life and supra-rational realms. I call upon my diverse background working with others to broaden and deepen their self understanding and catalyze authentic creative expression.

Creative Writing Highlights

Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference.
Award: Most Promising Young Poet, by Pulitzer nominee Sandra Hochman, Indiana University Writers Conference.
Studied with Pulitzer Prize winner Stanley Kunitz at Columbia University, NYC.
Volunteer: poetry therapy with psychiatric inpatients, Bellevue Hospital, NYC.
Taught poetry to multi-cultured ghetto teenagers, NYC.
First Place, Big Apple Poetry Contest, NYC, chosen by NY Times Art Critic + Pulitzer nominee.
Editor, Desert Song: Art Therapy Magazine, UNM, for two years.
Co-presenter, American Art Therapy Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles:
Myth, Metaphor, and Imagination in Art Therapy: A Case Study
Published Golden Arrows, in Pilgrimage: Reflections on the Human Journey, 20:3.
Co-editor, Myth, Magic, Mystery: The Liminal in Art, catalog of art and artist manifestos.
Co-author, Oracle: Visionary Art Expressing the Prophetic Voice, art catalog.
First Prize Poetry, San Francisco Writer’s Conference 2011 Indie Publishing Contest.

Jais Booth, MA ~ Jais' Background

Jais Booth, MA

BA Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology,
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, 1969
Ordination as Minister, Actualism, 1989
Certified Professional Hypnotherapist, Alchemy Institute, Santa Rosa, CA, 2005
MA Transformative Art, John F. Kennedy University, Berkeley, CA 2006

My practice as an artist is inextricably linked with my 50 years of discipline and study in both eastern and western forms of alchemy – the alchemy of personal growth and transformation. Using the beauty of automatism and “live lines”, I create from inner states of consciousness that reveal my soul life in the process of painting. My influences include ritual and sacred indigenous art, particularly native American (including Hawaii), Surrealism and Lucid art, Abstract and German Expressionism, and the art that springs from ritual everywhere it is found in all its mysteries. A successful outcome of my work is the ability to turn off intellectual agendas and programmed ideas of artistic creation, resulting in creative expression emerging in all its authenticity from the very core of myself. My art is the voice of the sacred in me, and in all humanity.

Creative Highlights

In August of 2008, with fellow artists, I started the Red Door Gallery and Collective in the Art Murmur district of downtown Oakland, CA. The Red Door began as a collective of 12 artist/poet/performers with a vision of art to transform both individuals and communities. Our studio gallery exhibited art from various community service organizations, while our main gallery showcased transformative artists from around the country. I served as a creative director and was one of the featured artists.

I curated Artisticana I and II (Dec. ’08 and ’09) and co-curated Art and the Body Politick* (Jan. ’09) and Myth, Magic, Mystery (April ’09) I co-edited and wrote a catalog of the show’s art and artist manifestos. After the gallery closed, we decided to travel to venues that were available and create shows, resulting in the art exhibition Mother held at UC Berkeley’s International House in celebration of International Women’s Day (March 8, 2011), and the Peace Altar at International House’s Springfest (April ’11).

In 2010 I co-founded the Liminal Art Salon®, dedicated to showing art from artists whose conscious purpose has been to cross the threshold and explore the creation of art from the invisible worlds of primary experiences.

I have authored and co-authored three books: Myth, Magic, Mystery, The Liminal in Art; Oracle: Visionary Art Expressing the Prophetic Voice; and The Twelve Sacred Doors, meditation guide and deck of cards created from a series of 12 sacred mandalas I painted.

I founded the Warrior of Light Studio in Huntington Beach, CA, after years of teaching tai chi chuan in community colleges, and published a manual of tai chi instruction, Wind Blowing Lotus Leaf with companion DVD, 1999.

Exhibitions:

The Poet and The Artist in Aphrodite’s Garden: A show of original poetry and art in service to the Liminal. June and July, 2014, Warehouse 416, Oakland, CA.
Oracle, an exhibit of visionary art expressing the prophetic voice at Oakopolis Gallery, 447 25th Street, Oakland, CA, (April/May ’11). Mother, an art exhibition exploring and celebrating the archetype of the Mother, at UC Berkeley’s International House (March ’11).
Shedding (July ’09), Death is Easy, Comedy is Hard (May ’09), Myth Magic Mystery (April ’09), Lineage (Feb. ’09), Art and the Body Politick* (Jan. 09), Portals (Nov. ’08), I See You I See Myself (Oct. ’08), Opening the Red Door (Sept. ’08), all at The Red Door Gallery, 416 26th Street, Oakland CA.
Conversations with My Body, Mixed media performance and exhibition of Ritual for Healing Scars, a 30 day ritual of healing through transformative art. Works in Progress Gallery, John F. Kennedy University Arts and Consciousness Department, Berkeley, CA, October 2005.
I See Myself as a Being of Light An exhibition of paintings that are meditations on the essential nature of human beings as infinite selves. Works in Progress Gallery, Berkeley, CA 2004.